I had the chance recently to put some questions to Damjan Mravunac, composer on all the Serious Sam games, about what we can expect from the upcoming 4th entry in the main series. Read on to see what it means to bring a classic series back, in a modern sense.

Maxi-Geek: You first revealed that Serious Sam 4 was in development a few years back with a calm trailer, with Sam riding on a bike. But then recently, when you re-introduced the game, you went with a very bombastic trailer, did the course of the game shift in development, or was the tone of the announcement trailer, just something different?

Damjan Mravunac: What CroTeam is all about, apart from games, is that we create our own engine, so we believed that the tech wasn’t ready for what we wanted to do, we had these great plans and ideas we wanted to do, like showing 100,000 enemies on screen at once, which we now can do.

So we went with a bit of a calmer trailer, to show people that Sam was still alive, that we would have vehicles this time, the bike is a dead giveaway of that, but the enemies running over the hill, which is in the game, it was just more of a teaser for players.

And now we are ready to reveal some of the real gameplay, which as you can see in the last two trailers, including the Stadia one, it is an epic trailer and has a few new shots in it, like enemies riding on drones, looks like the Green Goblin from Spider-man. So it’s really really fun, so this time if you have played Serious Sam 3, you might remember that it was a bit more realistic, some people say grim, but it was a bit more serious, no pun intended, so this time we listed to the fans and it has been 9 years since Serious Sam 3 released and fans really wanted to go back to what the original games did.

MG: So with a return to the original style, can players expect more of that, or will there be new elements still added to the game?

DM: The gameplay on offer here and the amount of enemies comes together in what we call Dancing with the Enemies, you know with different guns and trying to wrestle them, to find the best weapon and best outcome. So, this now looks more similar to The First Encounter, so fans of the series are going to love it.

We are adding a few surprises, so we are not evolving the formula that much, I think this still works, people are still eager to play this old arcade style type of gameplay but we’ll be adding some modern features, one that I like is weapon upgrades, so you will be able to find in the world by completing some optional missions, you will be able to find some cool weapon upgrades, which will change the way you play.

For example, if you are fighting a big enemy after just the first few levels and it gives you a lot of problems, and you don’t have enough fire power, you might then discover this cool upgrade that makes it so much easier, but to keep players on their toes, later on we might put 10 of those enemies in a room for you, to help balance it out, but still keeping it a little crazy.

MG: So this is technically the 5th game in the series, if you include the VR title.

DM: Yeah, the VR game is like a spin-off, it was VR exclusive and never released as a standalone desktop game, so yeah we could call this the 5th game in the series.

MG: Which means you have done a few of them and you did Talos Principal as well in between, the question I suppose, tying back to what you mentioned before about this being a bit more modern, was there a version of Serious Sam 4 that was just all new, all modern? Or was it always something that people could easily identify based on their playing of the originals?

DM: With the Talos Principal, we had envisioned that we would bring in some of those thinking elements into Serious Sam 4, but in the end, we discovered that these new mechanics that we developed for The Talos Principal, it didn’t work. This is a fast-paced action game where solving a puzzle, eventually just didn’t fit and I love that we discovered the ways to make The Talos Principal, but this is a game that is just more of the core basics that players know.

But we have added some new features, in addition to the weapon modifications, you might have seen in screenshots, we now have duel-wielding and you can do it with any two weapons. You can imagine yourself with a rocket launcher and a mini-gun, or even better two mini-guns, so you can shoot everything.

MG: Is the gun that fires the cannonballs still in the game?

DM: Yes, of course, that’s a trademark of the series. It would be like removing the kamikaze out, the cannonball is part of the series.

MG: The games in the past have had a lot of space to run around, shooting down countless enemies. For the new game, did you consider making things a little more linear, a little more structured, for new players, or was it a choice to leave it open, so players could mow down thousands of enemies?

DM: When I looked at the previous games, the formula is there where players enter these arenas, you might have come places where you explore, locate a secret, but you would always come back to an arena and these were spaces where you could not pass until you cleared it of all the enemies. It has pretty much stayed the same, we are still providing some of the arenas, but what you can do this time, you can go and solve optional missions. These missions are placed in the world and you can choose to solve it or not, but if you solve it, you will get a reward and this can be a gadget or a weapon upgrade, but they are a more intense challenge.

For the level you are currently playing, these challenges will be more of a higher difficulty, so you need to make the choice to spend ammo and health, going for a reward or do you just want to proceed in a more linear fashion towards the next objective. Serious Sam 4 is not an open world game, despite what we have showed with our huge levels, but the actual gameplay area is much smaller, there are no invisible walls to keep you in, there is nothing stopping you from getting on your motorcycle and driving off into the distance, and while you might have a small encounter or two whilst driving, there is no reward for driving to the edge of the map. It is just there to help make this new world believable.

So the game is linear, but the world is there to provide you with no constraints, a bit of a trick really.

MG: Sam is the star of the series and has always been a badass, but there has been a shift of late, to allow more freedom for players, to choose their character and make choices. Was there any talk of putting Sam in a commanding role, but letting players become Serious Samantha for example, so that they could feel more connected to the story?

DM: Well, I am glad you asked. This game serves as a prequel to Serious Sam 3, and at the very begin of 3, Sam is riding in a chopper with a bunch of his teammates, but within the first two levels they all die.

Here in 4, we wanted to explore that what we started in 3, so this time Sam is not alone, it is like in Predator, there is Dutch the leader and he has his crew of tough boys and girls, that are following him around and helping him out. His crew is called Alien Inquisition AAA or something, I can’t actually remember the name off the top of my head, but they are his teammates and you will chat with them, learn about their backgrounds and hopefully grow attached to them. Some of them will survive and some of them won’t and it will be exciting all the way to the end.

So this time there will be other characters around you and I think it works for the game, you are still the hero, you won’t go and hide in the bush, letting them do the work. No, they will help you out and the banter between them is B grade movie dialogue and it is so much fun. We even have a proper story this time, which is one of the biggest things I like about the game, in the past the story was perhaps not the most integral part of the game, there was a story, but it was just to allow you to push you forward.

This time, one of the writers of The Talos Principal, Jonas Kyratzes and his wife joined Croteam and now we will have the best stories ever for years to come. I read the story and I will be honest, at first I was against putting any kind of serious story, in the game, but what they wrote I am loving so much, it feels like a blend of the Expendables, Predator, Pacific Rim, all those big Hollywood action movies and I love how it is working out.

MG: Serious Sam was one of the first games I can recall, where when the action kicks in, the music would kick in, but once you had cleared an area, the music would fade away, giving you a chance to breath. As the music guy, how much fun was it to create a score that would really amp everything up, no matter what you saw on screen?

DM: As the sound guy, I first joined Croteam back in 1999, which makes me old, so 21 years ago, I brought some tunes, but it was just one tune playing, it became boring. Eventually there was an idea, what if we set the music when nothing much was happening, you were not being attacked, we call that peace music and when the combat starts, we start the fight music.

I started to create sets of music, and we implemented this, and I think we were one of the first that did this on PC, where the music would match the intensity of the gameplay and it worked really well. Of course, as a composer, it is a fine balance to create a perfectly matched set, there is music of really low intensity and then you switch to the fight music and you can tell it is the same style, the same music, just amped up to 40. It does have it’s restrictions though, I can’t go from Mexican guitar to full orchestra, but on the other hand, it does provide us with this more immersive experience, we are creating the dynamic soundtrack for the player, so we went and explored it more for Serious Sam 4, I am still making changes to the music, which will likely come post launch, as we have this new system in place.

If you have seen the Stadia trailer, it has different music from the earlier trailers and I think it is the most aggressive stuff that I have ever written, it has a really high intensity.

MG: Have you ever written any music and then realised, once it went to the game, that it didn’t work at all?

DM: Yes, there was one song last month, I put it in the game, and I don’t know, it just didn’t fit, it was too much of everything. I love this hybrid, Hans Zimmer blockbuster style and for the most part it works, but in this one level, which was smaller in scope and the fights were not that intense and it had this music that had a choir singing and we realised that it really didn’t fit, so we had to tame it down a bit.

You have to play the game you are composing, so I played these levels and I tried to see the things, how much space is between the fights, how many enemies are in each, how intense are the fights. IF there are two enemies, I won’t put the epic choir with the heavy metal guitar, I would put something of lower intensity in there instead. But I have 20 years of experience, so I usually get it right the first time, except for that time last month.

MG: See, now I want to hear that track, I want to know what this music was, that was to extreme for Serious Sam.

DM: Well, this track will actually make it into the game, just in one of the higher levels.

MG: Nice, now you guys are launching Serious Sam 4 on PC and Stadia in just a few weeks, just not for consoles yet. In the past Sam has made appearances on consoles, has there been any talk of bringing back some of the earlier games to modern consoles?

DM: Historically, we have brought each of our games to at least once console, so if you are talking about the last generation of consoles, like Switch or PS4, we have Talos Principal, which runs on the same engine. So there are no obstacles to putting Serious Sam on the today generation of consoles, it all depends on the end on the interest of the players.

These games are not new, the first game was released in 2001, Serious Sam 3 was 2011, anyone who wanted to played them, could have played them on PC or wherever they were released. On the other hand, there is a new generation of gamers, it has been 9 years since the last game and now a new generation of gamers that might have been introduced by PlayStation 3 and 4 and our games, which I believe are still good, they weren’t available for the today consoles.

So, I can’t promise you anything, but if there is enough interest, it is possible and I don’t see why not.

MG: The final question, is that Sam has had a few games now, but has there ever been any talk of taking Sam away from the games and having action figures, comics, movies or such? Or are you happy to have him remain as a game star?

DM: There are always chats and I even have some renders of Serious Sam figurines, but when you think that the last release of Sam was 9 years ago, in order to have a successful sale of anything, be it comics or books, movies, unless it is an iconic property, you need to have a current game out. So we will see how Serious Sam 4 goes and then we will have a think again about the figurines, comics and such, which is as much as I can say, I am not being smart or anything, but we would need to see and if it is viable, we might do it at some point.

My thanks to Damjan for taking the time to speak with me and remember the game is out this August and you can order it below.